


The Hope, It Goes As Follows

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-11
Updated: 2010-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet again in such an ordinary way that Santana almost doesn’t think it’s possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hope, It Goes As Follows

They meet again in such an ordinary way that Santana almost doesn’t think it’s possible.

She thinks it’s a dream and any moment, she’ll wake up to the sound of her alarm clock droning in her ear.

Except that moment – the one where she thinks it’s a dream – passes and Santana realizes: this is actually happening.

It’s just a street corner in a city they’ve both been living in since they’ve both managed, separately, to get out of Lima, and Santana doesn’t even almost run into Brittany, like in the movies they used to watch when they were young and hopelessly romantic, even at fifteen.

She just steps up to the edge of the sidewalk and looks over to check the lights and there she is, Brittany, humming quietly under her breath and nothing momentous happens. Santana glances away, slightly horrified that she’s wearing her old, ratty school sweater, and then looks back, but Brittany is still there, still humming something that sounds like “Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again” even though the sky is bright and clear.

“Brittany,” she says, her voice calmer than she would have though.

Brittany’s head turns and it’s not even shock shining in those bright blue eyes; the blond’s mouth widens gently in a smile and she tilts her head to the side, as if she’s more curious than anything.

“Santana.”

“Hi.”

Brittany smiles a little wider. “Santana Lopez.”

The light changes and the flow of the people move them from one street corner to the other and when Santana feels the sidewalk grate under her feet, she realizes she’s still staring at Brittany and that she hasn’t said anything.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” she finally says after running through a million different possible things she could say in her head; things like “ _I miss you_ ” or “ _I was stupid to say goodbye_ ”. It’s the truth, though: she’s been taking this route for almost as long as she’s been in the city, and she’s never seen Brittany before today.

It still feels like this isn’t  _real_.

“They’re doing construction. Detour,” Brittany says almost sheepishly. “I got the bus routes mixed up and ended up here.” Brittany shrugs her shoulders. “I didn’t realize we lived this close.”

“You live nearby?”

Brittany points uptown, her index finger hooking to the left. “I live that-a-way.”

It could mean she lives  _anywhere_  uptown, but Santana smiles anyway and hooks her thumb over her shoulder. “I live a couple of blocks back.”

“Who would have thought we’d ever get out of Lima,” Brittany says, like every other kid from high school has said when she’s run into them. Somehow, it doesn’t sound as overused or rehearsed or cliché coming from Brittany.

“I did,” she says, like she always answers.

The rest of them – Artie, Tina, Quinn and her kid, Rachel, Finn – all rolled their eyes and she could practically see the “ _Oh, Santana_ ” written in their eyes, but Brittany laughs, almost under her breath, and shakes her head and says, “That’s right. You did.”

So Santana smiles a little easier and isn’t even pretending when she motions towards a corner coffee shop, silently asking if Brittany wants to sit down for a minute, even though she knows she’ll be late for her sociology class.

Brittany checks her watch and wraps her arm around Santana’s, pulling them across the sidewalk foot traffic and into the shop.

Santana ignores the feeling in the tip of toes at the action; it’s just like high school, except their dodging suits with briefcases instead of freshman with rolling backpacks now; it’s just like high school, except Brittany is leading and Santana helpless to do anything but follow.

“So, you made it,” Brittany says nonchalantly as they sit down.

Santana swallows a little quicker then she meant to and her coffee burns the back of her throat. “Yeah,” she manages to get out, only coughing once, to ease the ache. “I did.”

“How long ago?”

“Two years,” she says quietly, peeling away a layer of skin around her fingernail.

She’s expecting an outburst; she’s expecting Brittany to stand and tower over her and yell “ _you were supposed to call me_ ” at the top of her lungs; she’s expecting a slap across the face, or tears in Brittany’s eyes, or even a hushed “ _bitch_ ” before Brittany stands and walks back out into the sea of pedestrians.

Brittany only nods and takes a sip of her coffee. “Enjoying the city so far?”

If this is some type of passive aggressive way of making Santana feel like dirt, it’s working.

“It’s fine,” she says slowly.

“That’s nice,” Brittany says quietly. “It’s like a huge playground, you know? Just like we imagined it would be.”

“The subways,” Santana agrees, not sure where this is going.

“One giant playground,” Brittany says again, her voice a little wistful. “Remember that night at the playground.”

On nights when the city is the loneliest, Santana doesn’t remember anything else.

“Remember we made that pact. You wouldn’t let me cut the tip of my finger or spit shake when we promised.”

“It was flu season,” Santana interjects quietly.

“You said though, that your word was enough of a promise. That your word was the only thing that mattered,” Brittany continues. “So I took your word and I left after graduation. And I waited.”

Santana grips her disposable cup a little tighter, the plastic cap popping off and staying on the edge of the cup, barely.

“I waited and I called,” Brittany says, her voice still low and calm and it’s all kind of unsettling, really. “I wrote and I called and I waited. And you never showed up.”

“Brittany-”

“You said your word was enough, that it mattered. And it’s been four years since I’ve even heard from you.”

She opens her mouth to defend herself; to say she got scared of what her words really meant; to apologize for every letter she threw away and every phone call she didn’t return and every question she brushed off when someone asked about Brittany; to tell Brittany she’s been trying to find her, even though it’s not really true.

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

Brittany smiles sadly and nods. “That’s what I thought.”

“I tried,” she says quickly, surprising both of them. “I just, couldn’t,” she finishes lamely.

Brittany tilts her head to the side and gives Santana a ghost of a smile. “You couldn’t what?”

She pauses and fiddles with the cardboard wrapped around her coffee cup and looks away before she looks up and finally says, “I couldn’t keep my promise.”

Brittany sits back in her seat. “Oh.”

“I wanted to,” she continues, “but I got here and it was just easier to forget, because it was just a pipe dream, you and me and together in the city. It was just a pipe dream.”

“No it wasn’t,” Brittany says quietly. “It could have been real.”

“We were eighteen,” Santana protests weakly, because they were. They were eighteen, stuck in a small town, and the only thing they could do was  _dream_ about getting out. They only thing they could do was dream and tell each other that it would happen eventually.

The thing about her dreams, though, is that Santana never actually expected they’d come true.

 “You said your word was enough and you never lied to me before, so I believed you,” Brittany says, pulling Santana out of her head.

Santana reaches a hand forward instinctively, resting it lightly over Brittany’s and she feels something spark; feels the coolness inside of her – the thing she ignored, because ignorance was easier than being cold all the time – start to heat and warm and spread through her body. “Brittany-”

Brittany gently removes her hand, dropping it into her lap. “I understand,” she says quietly, because the people at the next table are looking at them in interest. “I’m just,” she pauses, trying to find a word, “disappointed. I’m disappointed. I guess I always thought that just because we were eighteen didn’t mean we weren’t in love; just because we were eighteen didn’t make it any less real.” She smiles sadly and nods her head slowly. “I guess I… hoped.”

There’s a long pause and then Brittany says softly, “I guess you didn’t.”

She stands and Santana can’t will her feet to move, or her legs to lift her, because Santana has dreamed about this happening – about them meeting in some crowded club somewhere, not on a street corner – but it’s all so mellow and calm and anticlimactic that Santana is still trying to put all the pieces together. Brittany takes another sip of her coffee and puts it back down on the table, adjusting her purse on her shoulder. “It was nice seeing you,” she says, brushing her mouth against Santana’s cheek, dangerously close to Santana’s mouth.

It takes everything in her willpower not to turn her head that last fraction of an inch and feel Brittany’s mouth against her own, if only for a moment.

She raises her hand, as if she’s going to stop Brittany, but the blond is turning gracefully on her heel and walking back into the throng of New York traffic, being swept into the crowd – another pedestrian in the city of pedestrians and taxi cabs.

Santana can’t find it in herself to get up and go to sociology, because that was  _Brittany_ , the girl she’s been dreaming about since the last day of her last summer home, so she sits in the coffee shop until the barista asks her if she needs to call anyone – but there’s no one to call, anyway - and then she goes home to her empty apartment and pretends not to notice, again, that it feels even colder than when she left it in the morning.

She lies down in bed in her jeans and tries to fall asleep, but when she closes her eyes, all she sees is wild blond hair, spread across her pillow, and dark blue eyes so close Santana has to pull back just to see Brittany’s smile. She opens her eyes again and rolls over, burying her face in her pillow and she screams.

Just as quickly as she walked back into Santana’s life, Brittany walked back out again, leaving nothing but a half a cup of coffee and the scent of mango lingering in the air.


End file.
